3D printing technologies are evolving rapidly and are transforming global manufacturing in numerous industries, from transportation to medicine to apparel and beyond. With improving materials and greater ease of use, these technologies are also enabling everyday people to imagine and build sophisticated new devices on their own. Moreover, the ability to share designs electronically over the internet is allowing people to easily share their inventions globally. As with any new transformative technology, 3D printing also carries some risk.

Recently, 3D printing technologies have been used to create functional weapons that cannot be detected by existing scanning devices, posing potential security risks. The potential for sharing instructions for creating these weapons over the internet has been the subject of lawsuits involving constitutional rights and public safety concerns. This forum will lay out the complex landscape of issues surrounding this topic and begin discussing some possible strategies for responsible stewardship of this technology.